discuss: Thread: Jdd's English skills and the LDP

Jean,

Please don't take this too personally, but i find your
prominence in this mailing list a little discouraging.
...The problem is, the LDP is a documentation project,
primarily in English, and your English skills are not what
anyone would expect of a polished documentation project.

I'm not saying your contribution is not appreciated, but
imho your unsophisticated English, and prominence is this
mailing list, are somewhat counter-productive.

I realise others may not agree at all :>, and hope i haven't
offended you.

regards, Steven



      

Steven a écrit :
> Jean,
> 
> Please don't take this too personally, but i find your
> prominence in this mailing list a little discouraging.
> ...The problem is, the LDP is a documentation project,
> primarily in English, and your English skills are not what
> anyone would expect of a polished documentation project.

I apologize for that

> 
> I'm not saying your contribution is not appreciated, but
> imho your unsophisticated English, and prominence is this
> mailing list, are somewhat counter-productive.
> 
> I realise others may not agree at all :>, and hope i haven't
> offended you.

I know this limitation. We now have organisation problems and this is
what I try to fix. I' very glad if anybody want to take over the work.

I hope we will soon be able to turn back to our most important task:
HOWTO writing

this said, the LDP is *not* a us or british organisation, but a world
wide one and we should have as many authors/members as possible, what
ever could be they langage expertise, if they have expertise in other
part.

I greatly appreciate the work some of the LDP members do to fix my english

jdd



-- 
jdd for the Linux Documentation Project
http://wiki.tldp.org
http://www.dodin.net

On Sat, Sep 27, 2008 at 11:06 AM, jdd for http://tldp.org ####@####.#### wrote:
> Steven a écrit :
>> Jean,
>>
> I greatly appreciate the work some of the LDP members do to fix my english
>
> jdd
>
>

But that would be very nice if somebody can offer some advices or
lessons. So, I would use the opportunity to improve my skills too.
Actually my knowledge about the English is also poor.

-- 
Svetoslav P. Chukov

Steven wrote:
> Jean,
> 
> Please don't take this too personally, but i find your
> prominence in this mailing list a little discouraging.
Well, IMHO you are totally missing the point :)

> ...The problem is, the LDP is a documentation project,
No, it's not.

It's a document organisation and management project that has to do some editing
from time to time; and at the moment it is producing its own infrastructural
content.

> primarily in English, and your English skills are not what
> anyone would expect of a polished documentation project.
Not at all.
Good editorial skills are clearly needed - but most of all Jean is bringing
enthusiasm and drive.

Sure, he needs help writing english - but another of LDPs goals is to be
international and I think having a highly active and respected non-native
english speaker/writer will help immensely in this area.

> I'm not saying your contribution is not appreciated, but
> imho your unsophisticated English, and prominence is this
> mailing list, are somewhat counter-productive.
And what is your english like?
If it's better then how many oj Jean's documents have you edited for grammar?

I see 3 posts from you to the list in the last several months that I've been around.
jdd has made well over 200 - I know who I'd rather have driving the project!!!

> I realise others may not agree at all :>, and hope i haven't
> offended you.

FWIW *I* found your post to be borderline offensive and I cringed when I felt
associated with you as an english speaker in this english dominated world.

You are critical without thinking; that's offensive. Clearly you are aware of
the tone since you apologise. But you don't seem to be bothered enough to
reconsider how you approach the issue or to rephrase your post to be more
positive. Consider an alternative post you could have made:

Guys,

One of the things I think we need to focus on is the standard of writing and
grammar. Jean (please don't take this too personally) being a non-native english
speaker does not have the strongest language skills and his English is not what
anyone would expect of a polished english language documentation project.

I'm not saying your contribution is not appreciated, but I think we need to find
a way to polish the finished result.

If you don't mind then I will volunteer to act as editor for any posts you make.

regards, Steven


Jean - keep up the excellent work!

David


-- 
"Don't worry, you'll be fine; I saw it work in a cartoon once..."

David Greaves a écrit :

> You are critical without thinking; that's offensive. Clearly you are aware of
> the tone since you apologise.

please :-) I don't feel offensed.

Not to say reading such mail is pleasant, but I favor freedom of writing.

Steven may have been a bit rough, but I'm sure many think like him and
don't worry to say, going away silently.

this organisational (is that english?) work I try to do now is boring
for anybody (including me), but it have to be done.

I hope we will have ended this before the end of the year, and then I
will have much less reasons to write here.

Note that we could have done such discussion of the staff list, but I
think we a not that a number and I want to let anybody a chance to
give opinion.

I hope Steven will now take part of our work and I thanks him by advance.

jdd


-- 
jdd for the Linux Documentation Project
http://wiki.tldp.org
http://www.dodin.net

I completely agree with David Greaves.

The point of criticizing if to improve something by showing how it could be
better (different). Emailing just to discourage the valuable effort of
someone without offering any help / support / solution is just trolling
around.

I hope jdd took it rather lightly and keep up the stamina he has been
showing.

On Sat, Sep 27, 2008 at 6:00 AM, David Greaves ####@####.#### wrote:

> Steven wrote:
> > Jean,
> >
> > Please don't take this too personally, but i find your
> > prominence in this mailing list a little discouraging.
> Well, IMHO you are totally missing the point :)
>
> > ...The problem is, the LDP is a documentation project,
> No, it's not.
>
> It's a document organisation and management project that has to do some
> editing
> from time to time; and at the moment it is producing its own
> infrastructural
> content.
>
> > primarily in English, and your English skills are not what
> > anyone would expect of a polished documentation project.
> Not at all.
> Good editorial skills are clearly needed - but most of all Jean is bringing
> enthusiasm and drive.
>
> Sure, he needs help writing english - but another of LDPs goals is to be
> international and I think having a highly active and respected non-native
> english speaker/writer will help immensely in this area.
>
> > I'm not saying your contribution is not appreciated, but
> > imho your unsophisticated English, and prominence is this
> > mailing list, are somewhat counter-productive.
> And what is your english like?
> If it's better then how many oj Jean's documents have you edited for
> grammar?
>
> I see 3 posts from you to the list in the last several months that I've
> been around.
> jdd has made well over 200 - I know who I'd rather have driving the
> project!!!
>
> > I realise others may not agree at all :>, and hope i haven't
> > offended you.
>
> FWIW *I* found your post to be borderline offensive and I cringed when I
> felt
> associated with you as an english speaker in this english dominated world.
>
> You are critical without thinking; that's offensive. Clearly you are aware
> of
> the tone since you apologise. But you don't seem to be bothered enough to
> reconsider how you approach the issue or to rephrase your post to be more
> positive. Consider an alternative post you could have made:
>
> Guys,
>
> One of the things I think we need to focus on is the standard of writing
> and
> grammar. Jean (please don't take this too personally) being a non-native
> english
> speaker does not have the strongest language skills and his English is not
> what
> anyone would expect of a polished english language documentation project.
>
> I'm not saying your contribution is not appreciated, but I think we need to
> find
> a way to polish the finished result.
>
> If you don't mind then I will volunteer to act as editor for any posts you
> make.
>
> regards, Steven
>
>
> Jean - keep up the excellent work!
>
> David
>
>
> --
> "Don't worry, you'll be fine; I saw it work in a cartoon once..."
>
> ______________________
> http://lists.tldp.org/
>
>


-- 
André Nunes Batista

http://tagesuhu.wordpress.com/

Quoting Steven ####@####.####

> Please don't take this too personally, but i find your
> prominence in this mailing list a little discouraging.
> ...The problem is, the LDP is a documentation project,
> primarily in English, and your English skills are not what
> anyone would expect of a polished documentation project.

FWIW, I've been gladly fixing Jean-Daniel's sometimes uncertain English
idiom on his LDP wiki pages.  (It probably helps that I am francophone
as a second language.)

Like you, I respect his desire to make progress.  Because of that, I try
to see past occasional language problems.

On Sat, Sep 27, 2008 at 12:50 PM, Steven ####@####.#### wrote:

> ...The problem is, the LDP is a documentation project,
> primarily in English, and your English skills are not what
> anyone would expect of a polished documentation project.


I've not been contributing much either but I'm lurking. I dont know how to
rate my English skills but I'm sure they're above average. One of the things
you ought to keep in mind is that in the scientific / technical community
grammatical errors aren't given too much importance. I mean they're not
supposed to be present in papers or such publications but in a quasi formal
document which you find online its fine. Moreover if you're so passionate
about having correct language usage then please go through all the documents
and correct the mistakes. Nobodys perfect.

I'm not saying your contribution is not appreciated, but
> imho your unsophisticated English, and prominence is this
> mailing list, are somewhat counter-productive.


No, infact I think the enthusiasm that he exudes definitely motivates people
to contribute. Thats far far more important than anything else.


Also, for a fact Chinese is going to be the next world language. So ya'll
better start learning Chinese :P

--
DJ